Cronios, WatchCuts, and GeoCuts

Really jazzed about releasing two new shortcuts and an update to Cronios this weekend. I now have developed three distinct methods for running shortcuts automatically in the background:

Date and Time: Cronios

Remote Trigger from iCloud-connected device: WatchCuts + Cronios

Location: GeoCuts + Cronios

Cronios 1.3.0 adds a new Cron Job Assistant that guides you in creating cron jobs. This was one of the more challenging aspects to the earlier releases of Cronios — getting familiar with cron schedule expressions can take time. The new Cron Job Assistant takes a lot of guesswork out of scheduling your cron jobs with a step-by-step wizard.

Second, cron jobs now have access to the Repeat Interval feature of both WatchCuts and GeoCuts. The Repeat Interval lets you set the minimum amount of time before the cron job’s shortcut can run again. You can set the shortcut to run once, run every time, or run after a certain number of minutes, hours, or calendar days have passed.

Together, these features separate the (1) evaluation of a cron job from (2) running of the shortcut. Now, you can have your cron job evaluate every minute but run every 5 minutes, 3 hours, or 1 calendar day.

WatchCuts lets you trigger the running of shortcuts on your iPhone and iPad straight from any iCloud-connected device: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and even iCloud.com!

Check out the exciting launch trailer for WatchCuts on YouTube. The old SportsScope theme song keeps on paying dividends.

GeoCuts brings automatic triggering of shortcuts based on your current location. Other solutions require tapping on a notification banner, but GeoCuts + Cronios lets you do this all automatically (or on-demand via Siri).